The Weekend Buzz while you were standing in line to see Spider-Man 3. ...
1. See the ball, hit the ball: Unless you were Alex Rodriguez in April or Jack Cust in May, odds are that you've likely spent hours pondering that statement and studying video evidence of your own broken-down, misfiring and wretched swing.
Everywhere you look this season, roadsides are littered with the carcasses of hitters who once rolled out of bed batting .300 or slugging 50 homers. From Alfonso Soriano (no homers in April) to Albert Pujols (seven homers on the season) to Paul Konerko (.201) and beyond, hitting coaches across the land are putting in hours of overtime attempting to solve slumps.
Though we figured we'd see orange baseballs before ever again uttering the phrase "Year of the Pitcher," circumstantial evidence is beginning to pile up. Check out these numbers out from the Elias Sports Bureau, through Saturday's games:
- This year's average runs-per-game of 9.05 is down from 9.76 in 2006 and currently is the lowest average since 1992.
- This year's home runs-per-game of 1.84 is down from 2.22 in 2006 and currently is the lowest average since 1993.
- This year's major league batting average of .258 is down from last year's .269 and is the lowest since 1992.
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| Albert Pujols isn't the only one wondering what's wrong with his bat. (Getty Images) |
When they return home Tuesday to play Pittsburgh after Detroit swept them over the weekend, the Cardinals will be looking for their first Busch Stadium homer since April 28. They completed their most recent home stand (May 4-9) without going deep -- their first homerless home stand, according to home run guru David Vincent of the Society for American Baseball Research, since Aug. 22-31, 1986.
Fact is, when Chris Duncan homered in Dodger Stadium last Monday, it ended a 93-inning homerless drought for St. Louis.
In the Steroid Era, nobody went 93 seconds without a homer.
"L.A., for the past 12, 13 games, has struggled; a few guys on the Padres are struggling," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was saying the other day. "I just think good pitching's going on."
Indeed, hitting coach Merv Rettenmund, at wit's end with the Padres hitting just .240 as a team, called a rare hitters-only meeting before Friday's series opener in Seattle, and CEO Sandy Alderson has publicly hinted that the club may be open to shortening the Petco Park fences. In Los Angeles, where Punch wears blue and Judy red, they're screaming for the Dodgers and Angels to add a bat.
Two Fridays ago, the White Sox fielded a lineup in which the top hitter was Darin Erstad (.258), next was Tadahito Iguchi (.236) -- and not one of the other seven hitters was over .216. The White Sox as a team entered Sunday's series finale with the Cubs batting only .223 -- leaving talk-show callers screaming for the head of hitting coach Greg Walker.
"You know when you sign on as a hitting coach that there is a termination date," says Walker, who already has received votes of confidence this season from both general manager Kenny Williams and manager Ozzie Guillen. "There's going to be a day when I decide -- or they decide -- that I'm not going to do this anymore. Right now, the White Sox family thinks I'm the best guy for this job. As long as they feel that way, I'm going to come here and keep working just as hard."
Those in the industry point to the usual contributing factors as to why so many hitters are off to such slow starts, among them:
- The natural arc as steroid testing becomes entrenched in the game.
- Cold and wet weather early in the season.
- The recent influx of good, young arms like San Diego's Jake Peavy, Detroit's Justin Verlander, Boston's Jonathan Papelbon, Philadelphia's Cole Hamels, Seattle's Felix Hernandez, the Angels' Jered Weaver, Pittsburgh's Ian Snell, San Francisco's Matt Cain and others.
Probably all of those are contributing to this year's trend, though regarding the weather it wasn't cold everywhere early and, while that affects homer numbers, it shouldn't have that much to do with batting average.
Yet usually heavy-hitting Texas, at .243, owns the second-worst average in the AL -- though both Michael Young (.188 through the Rangers' first 20 games) and Mark Teixeira (.213 through the first 21 games) finally are hitting the accelerator.
The epidemic has spread like the West Nile virus. Cleveland's Grady Sizemore never hit lower than .288 last year, but was at .239 a couple of weeks ago before finishing the weekend at .273. Indians designated hitter Travis Hafner is hitting .196 in May. Atlanta center fielder Andruw Jones was at .219 for the season with six homers, the Mets' Carlos Delgado at .219 ... on and on it goes.
And this season, nobody is immune.
The heretofore white-hot A-Rod? When he homered against the Mets on Saturday, it was only his second in a span of 82 at-bats.
It was the third-longest single-season stretch of his career with only one home run.
2. Burning in the Bronx: Everybody's talking about Roger Clemens, but the guy the Yankees really are going to need is sitting on Cincinnati's bench as a coach: Bucky Dent. At 10½ games out of first place, it's the largest divisional deficit the Yankees have faced in May since 1984. The largest divisional deficit they've overcome was 14 games in 1978. You might recall, Dent attached the exclamation point to that.
3. Baseball might investigate Jason Giambi: Then the game's apology for steroids suggested by Giambi would come right after that. We're sure. Positive. Perhaps. Well, maybe not ...
4. The Winter Classic: Just wait until the corporate deal is announced and it's officially renamed The North Face World Series Presented by Klondike.
5. World Series revisited: You might have noted that as Detroit swept St. Louis this weekend, Tigers pitchers made exactly four fewer errors in three games than they did in five last October. Only reliever Jason Grilli (throwing error on Friday) will be asked to show up early for PFP this week.
6. World Series 2004 revisited: Not only does Boston lead the majors in runs scored, the Red Sox since April 18 have only two more losses (eight) than St. Louis starter Kip Wells (six).
7. Ichiro Gone Wild: After his AL-record streak of 45 successful steal attempts was snapped last Thursday, Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki promptly celebrated by swiping six bases in three games against the Padres over the weekend. Grading on the curve, however, Ichiro only gets a B -- the Padres this season have allowed opponents to steal in 51 of 56 attempts.
8. Braves sale formalized: Bet nobody at Liberty Media is cool enough to date Jane Fonda or crass enough to order a Braves starting pitcher to wear the No. 17 with "Channel" over it instead of his name (where have you gone, Andy Messersmith?).
9. Barry Zito returns to Oakland: And discovers, while getting hammered for seven runs in four innings Friday night, that there actually is a "there" there.
10. Interleague play: Baseball's version of varsity-junior varsity scrimmages begins its 11th season in same ol', same ol' fashion in which it's been conducted in the past: The score was AL 24 wins, NL 18 over the weekend, after the AL hammered the NL 154-98 last summer and owns a .510 winning percentage over the past decade.
